JESSE JACKSON AND THE RIGHTS OF MEN

   THE Rev. Jesse Jackson, as the premier civil rights leader (apologies to Al Sharpton, who may be sliding in the respect department), ordinarily misses no opportunity to fulminate about the tiniest inequality encumbering minorities and women.

     Yet he has long ignored a gargantuan inequality that encumbers men, especially black men due to their fewer financial resources. He continues to ignore this inequality even though he himself is encumbered by it.

     Some years ago Jackson had an out-of-wedlock child with Karin Stanford, a one-time aide in Jackson's Rainbow PUSH Coalition Washington office. Although he seems to have recovered politically from the scandal, he is still saddled with a child support obligation of $4,000-a-month. This amount may make even the well-off reverend wince. If so, he’ll wince monthly for at least the next 16 years – all because Stanford declined to exercise her right of abortion.

     What is the gigantic gender inequality Jackson ignores? A woman may either take a pregnancy to term or abort it if she doesn't want or can't afford to support a child. In contrast,  the man has  no right to withhold money if he doesn't want to pay support for a child he didn't want or even if he can't afford the support.

     If men had the right to withhold support, the right would in no way hinder the right of a woman to control her own body; she is free to do as she chooses, just as before. It would merely give the man a right that is fair and equal to the woman's right to deliver a child against his wish.

     Yet courts have routinely denied this right to men. As justification they typically cite “the best interests of the child” and “to keep women off welfare.” Never mind that using “the best interests of the child” to deny women an abortion right has been outlawed since Roe v. Wade nearly 30 years ago. And try using “to keep men off welfare” to deny women equal work rights!

     So the courts, while enforcing equal workplace rights to prevent female economic devastation, ignore equal "childplace" rights and often create male economic devastation by requiring men -- including poor men who possess none of the “male power” that perhaps further justifies courts’ opposition to men withholding support for a child they did not want -- to pay for a child they neither wanted nor could afford.

     This court-sanctioned economic devastation of males isn’t reserved just for adults. “If an underage boy is officially recognized as a victim of statutory rape and the act results in a birth,” says gender expert Cathy Young, author of Ceasefire! Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality, “he is liable for child support.” Now consider: If just one underage girl were impregnated by an adult male, forced to have the baby and hand it over to the man, and then was ordered to pay child support for 18 years, femininists would crash through the court house in tanks and blow the judge to smithereens! (See story about a 13-year-old girl who was denied an abortion.)

     The male's automatic liability for child support is underscored by Warren Farrell in Father and Child Reunion: “Forcing a man to do ‘100 percent pay, but no say’ – under penalty of being put in jail – is the modern-day equivalent of slavery.” Slavery of females is precisely what feminists would call it if men had all the say.

     So when Karin Stanford let Jesse Jackson know he had no rights regarding the pregnancy that she was as much responsible for as he (or morally more responsible if she deceived him), he could have presented this inequality to the world. He could have helped the only minority group still ignored – men, especially black men, who get the double dose of anti-male sexism and the regular racism. (For more on the plight of black men, search for “black men” and "black males" in my search window.)

     He could have said, “Long after we have realized the horror in depriving females an abortion right, we remain horrified at the idea of granting a comparably equal right to males. This anti-male bias is as entrenched in both liberals and conservatives as was the anti-female bias decades ago. If women deserve equality in the productive world, men deserve equality in the reproductive world. They don’t deserve the callous ‘You play, you pay’ any more than women do.”

     He could have quoted from Father and Child Reunion: “‘In the old days, a woman’s biology was a woman’s destiny. Not good. ...[T]oday, a woman’s biology is a man's destiny.’” To which he could have added: “Depriving males of an equal ‘abortion’ right violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal-protection provision. Without this equal protection, the male, especially if impoverished, is forced to accept a life-altering financial burden, the kind that is imposed on the female only if she chooses it.”

     Master of the resonating rhyme, Jackson could have raised society’s consciousness with such slogans as: “Taxation without representation,” “Females choose, males lose,” “All pay and no say,” and “Give men a voice in the choice.”

     Regrettably, perhaps in part because of the feminist-driven “male power/female powerlessness” mindset, demanding a withhold-support right for men might have killed Jackson’s career as premier civil rights leader, rather than temporarily wound it as did his out-of-wedlock child with Karin Stanford. But if Jackson won’t advocate gender equality for half of the population, especially half of the black population, can we really call him a leader?

(A tragic irony: Although no affirmative action helps even poor black men in the reproductive realm, affirmative action helps even wealthy white women in the productive realm. See "How Affirmative Action Keeps Blacks Behind Whites." See also "A Man's Right to Choose?")

tags: mens reproductive rights  black men  

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